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WASHINGTON — As if the Republicans weren’t giving President Obama enough trouble on health care, Sen. Joe Lieberman said yesterday he’ll vote to bottle up health-reform legislation in the Senate if it has a government-run “public option.”

Lieberman, a Democrat turned independent, said he is strongly inclined to vote with his party on the first procedural test — a vote to bring to the floor a health-care bill orchestrated by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in a bare-knuckled test of wills with centrist critics.

But after that, all bets are off, and Lieberman said he may join a Republican-led effort to kill the bill with a filibuster.

“We’re trying to do too much at once,” Lieberman said. “To put this government-created insurance company on top of everything else is just asking for trouble for the taxpayers, for the premium-payers, and for the national debt. I don’t think we need it now.”

Lieberman says he wasn’t swayed by Reid’s latest effort at a compromise — allowing states to “opt out” of the government-run public option.